The knowledge associated with products and procedures related to these products, e.g., the knowledge necessary for properly handling the products, has increased during the last decade in a variety of technical fields. One of these fields involves bearings and seals. Even though the basic principles of today's bearings and seals are, in some cases, almost 100 years old, the procedures associated with mounting, dismounting and servicing them has steadily grown, and continues to grow, in complexity and importance. An improperly mounted bearing or seal, for example, can significantly reduce the life of the bearing or seal. There is thus great value in properly mounting, dismounting and servicing a bearing or a seal.
The proper mounting, dismounting and servicing of bearings and seals involves many different factors Typically, seal or bearing manufacturers will publish a manual or other similar technical handbook describing the various products produced by the company and setting forth various instructional information, including instructional information regarding mounting, dismounting and servicing the products. A customer needing to mount, dismount or service a bearing or seal, can then consult the manual or handbook to obtain the necessary information about mounting, dismounting or servicing the bearing or seal.
One difficulty associated with this procedure is that a customer seeking information about mounting, dismounting or servicing a particular bearing or seal must search through the many different products referenced in the manual or handbook to identify the product of particular relevance. This may be a rather time consuming and cumbersome task. In addition, this procedure presents the possibility that the incorrect product may be identified, thus possibly resulting in an incorrect mounting, dismounting or servicing procedure being carried out.
The progress in the fields of computers and communications have reached a point where they now can offer increased competitive advantages for companies in a wide variety of technological fields, including even relatively more mature technical fields such as bearings and seals. The inventors herein have thus discovered that advantages can be obtained by using these advancements in technology in areas such as bearings and seals.
In WO 98/19259 a system and method for managing and serving consumer product related information over the internet is presented. This document describes a system and method for finding and serving information pertaining to a particular product on the internet. It also includes an aspect of an inter-based consumer product information delivery system. A chief purpose of this system and method is to disseminate consumer product information in order to advertise and sell products. Another purpose seems to involve providing assistance to consumers searching for specific products by using stored Universal Product Numbers (e.g. UPCs) which are preassigned to each consumer product registered in the system. To obtain more information of a specific consumer product there are Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) available that point at other information sources available at other servers outside the system. Another purpose of the disclosed system and method is to link a potential user of a consumer product to a provider of that consumer product provided that provider is registered in the system.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,856,931 describes a method and system for identifying, organizing, scheduling, executing, analyzing and documenting detailed inspection activities for specific items or assets in either a time-based or on-demand fashion. The method and system described in this document can be used in relation to, for instance, machinery of a factory plant. It can be used as an assistant assisting personnel to perform inspections correctly by instructing what features to inspect. For instance, the disclosed system and method can be used to assist and supervise personnel performing lubrication procedures of one or more machines. The system determines the points that receive specific attention based on multiple selection criteria both calculated by the method and input by the user.